Grief Chop

Grief Chop

The 5 stages of Grief are: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance.  I (Amy) would like to add a 6th stage - Control. Whatever events in our lives that creates grief, most times it is out of our control. It’s a scary place to feel lost and vulnerable, even more so if one believes there is an enemy on this earth whose job is to kill, steal and destroy us, especially when we are grieving.

This is my story of current grief and journey to healing.  My husband Brad and I have been married 8 years, during that time we have struggled with infertility. I have PCOS which creates a hormone imbalance and is the leading cause of female infertility. Brad has low testosterone that for him equaled zero sperm count. We love the fact that we are both infertile, there isn’t just one person to blame which in an odd way is comforting. We have laughed, cried and bonded together in this fact and that the Lord would have us together for this journey.

We stopped trying to have children several years ago and put the focus on growing our businesses we own. We were just about to put adoption and/or foster care on the table for discussion, when on May 14th 2018 we found out we were pregnant. Such a shock, I did not  even remember how to read a pregnancy test it had been so long since I had took one. (And ladies can I get an amen, those lines can be confusing when your heart beat is pounding in your head because your life could possibly change big time.) So there we were, pregnant after years of trying, a pure miracle is the only way to describe it. We called our doctor and made our first appointment. At our first appointment we got to do an ultrasound (benefits of being 36 and labeled advanced maternal age - FYI - such a horrible name!). There it was on the screen, a small blur with a heartbeat, then everything felt real. They had predicted I was around 6 weeks.  

For 1 month we got to live in the miracle of life between 2 infertile people. At 10 weeks, I had what they call a Missed Miscarriage. My body did not know the baby had passed and thought it was still pregnant. We found this out from our doctor at during our 10 week ultrasound. There was nothing to see, no blur and no heartbeat, nothing but shadows, emptiness. Again shock knocked on our door, however this time it felt like it slammed through the door and ripped its hinges off along with our hearts.

Brad and I went to Tanyard Creek, one of our favorite nature and hiking trails; its where he proposed to me so it holds a special spot in our hearts, and that day we needed our hearts to be held in a safe place. We grieved together by the lake, with our feet in the water and the sun on our faces. We went through all 5 steps of grief, all at once and with no order about them. It was a ball of emotions and we sat before our heavenly Father and asked him to help us sort it all out. I will not sit here telling you I understand why God decides and allows the events in our lives, his ways are higher than mine so I won’t even try to sort out his reasonings. That day by the lake I had to choose that God is always good, because my feelings did not line up with that, I believe God can handle my feelings...all of my feelings, the good, the bad, the ugly and the ones no one wants to admit we feel.

That day by the lake we asked the Lord what was next and heard and felt that He had given us hope. Hope was in the form of a small baby, hope strangely was in the death of that small baby, and hope is what would be left for us to hold onto. The Kooglers were able to get pregnant, take that all the doctors that said it was next to impossible!! Hope was returned to us, hope that we let die within us long ago during our years of infertility. It took this death to allow hope to return. It reminded me that Jesus’s death is hope for all of us and that was an unexpected jewel I’m learning through my grief.

So what was next? Oh that’s right, control. The following week I chopped off my hair...it was something I could control, and it felt good in so many different ways. And of course it wasn’t about the hair, it’s never about the hair (or whatever the things are we choose to try to control). It was about a fresh start, a new beginning, a change because it’s hard to show the world our grief sometimes.